737 Happy Days
My grandma would have been 119 today. She was and still is a huge influence on me. I wrote about her for my final assignment in my Arts Education post-grad diploma. Here is part of it.
My grandma instilled in me a sense of “making special” every time she used the serrated cookie cutter and the tines of a fork to make the pattern on each piece of shortbread. I watched her carefully roll balls of dough in icing sugar to make pecan snowballs. I remember her pouring tea from the gold teapot into the small hand-painted teacup that I now have sitting in my china cabinet. “Making special” was a way of life for my grandma and she has bequeathed this tradition to my mother and me. “Making special” is intergenerational and cross-cultural.
So how does this all connect to what I have learned about arts education in the last few years? Like food and relationships, the arts transcend status, ethnicity, wealth, geography, colour, race, age, religion...any of the states that we find ourselves to be in. Like food, art bridges all kinds of differences. Like food, the arts give us a way of expressing, celebrating and appreciating. My grandmother synthesized all this in a simple piece of shortbread.
In working through the diverse arts experiences of the last four years, I have come to this simple conclusion - we “make special” because we love. That is what my grandma knew - that is what I want to give away. So come sit at the table, enjoy some shortbread and let’s be friends!
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